The new iPhone 16e

Surprisingly, this tempts me

A new iPhone was announced this week — the iPhone 16e. It feels like a successor to the SE line, the one where slightly older components were made available in a more affordable package compared to the brand new flagship of the year, helping you get into the Apple ecosystem without having to buy a secondhand phone or a bludgeoningly expensive one.

A few of the changes include upgrading the base storage from 64 GB to 128 GB, upgrading the screen to OLED (6.1"), and switching to USB-C.

But for me, this is what makes the phone interesting:

• Starting price is about $600. The last iPhone SE started around $400–450.
• Adds some of the unsung hero features of recent years. Including satellite services (like emergency messaging when you don’t have cellular signal) and crash detection. And I guess I should mention Apple Intelligence.
• Removes MagSafe. To be honest, I did not see this one coming. I always believed MagSafe accessories were a big cash cow for Apple. Quite the surprise. (It still has Qi wireless charging…)
• Adds the Action button, but no Camera Control or Dynamic Island.

• New C1 chip. Apple, for the first time, has put a custom-designed cellular chip in their phone. When Apple makes custom chips, it normally means great things (because they can make it the size, shape, and efficiency-balance that works best for their software and use case). Apple’s chip innovation has led to laptop chips that tripled speed over the market and elongated battery life, and iPhone chips that gave the iPhone Plus phones the best battery life in the industry despite not very big physical batteries.
• Goes to a one-camera system. It’s a very nice single camera, but I hear this means there is no cinematic mode for video and no hardware image stabilization. But you know what this really means: no psychotically large camera bump!
• Redesigned and upgraded battery. Partially because they have the C1 chip, because of the camera redesign, and maybe because of the lack of MagSafe, Apple got to redesign the battery setup. That means, in roughly the same case we got for the normal-sized iPhone 14, we now get 26 hours of video playback! This is a legitimate difference maker.

There are people across the interwebs saying the price increase is unjustified, because there is only one camera and no MagSafe. But, one Reddit thread had two comments back to back that said the price was “outrageous” followed by “quite a steal.” So what’s the other side of the coin?

To be honest with you, I am extremely tempted to switch from my iPhone 15 Pro to the iPhone 16e. The most important thing to me in a phone is battery life. And I hate camera bumps.

As for what these changes mean in context, there are rumors that a fancy one-camera system will be coming on the so-called “iPhone 17 Air” and the new C-series chips will help the phone be ultra slim. So the iPhone 16e is helping transition Apple to their new golden gadget. Further rumors suggest the “iPhone 17 Air” is a stepping stone phone to a folding iPhone. We don’t know for sure on those things, but there are interesting possibilities for where Apple goes from here.

Feel free to leave a reply. How do you feel about iPhone 16e?